we have supposed. The drop on the thirty-seventh day was very slight and did not clear away all the old corpuscles. If we take in this time from the twenty-seventh to the fortieth day, we have a period of two weeks. During this time the corpuscles were at their worst, and Mr. Griscom was at his worst also.

Notice again, that just before a drop there is always a rise, sometimes extending over a period of several days, as though the corpuscles were breaking up preparatory to going to pieces altogether.

Again, after every drop the corpuscles looked better than they did just before, and every drop was succeeded by a rise in very nearly the same ratio as the preceding fall.

It will be noticed, also, that on the last day, Mr. Griscom drank no water, and the number ran very high, due perhaps, to the greater concentration of the blood. This concentration of the blood may have something to do with the variation in the number of the corpuscles.

Allow me here to call attention to certain bodies which I have found in all human blood that I have examined. They are minute granules which can be seen with a good high-power glass without the addition of any reagent, but they are best seen after staining. If we place a drop of carmine staining fluid at the upper edge of the cover-glass, while studying a drop of fresh blood, with the microscope inclined, there will soon be seen bright red points sliding across the field, long before any other evidence of staining appears. As the staining fluid comes down further, these bodies increase in number until, finally, when the field of the microscope has been entirely traversed by the fluid, they are countless. Under a magnifying power of from 1200 to 1500 diameters, they appear as minute round bodies of varying size, which I have estimated as averaging about ʊʊ of an inch in diameter. They are highly refractile, appearing as bright red points with a black rim which varies in width as the focus is changed; when they are slightly beyond the focus, the red point disappears, and they look like black dots. Dr. Osler and others have described something similar in the blood of the lower animals, but their descriptions do not agree in all points with what I have seen.

I have examined the blood of persons of all ages, and in all conditions of health and, with one exception, have never failed to

1

find these bodies. I have also found them in other fluids of the body and in cows' milk, though not very abundant."

In my first examination of Mr. Griscom's blood I found them in great numbers and continued to look for them during the whole fast. In a few days they were less abundant, and then they disappeared and returned again, but on the eighth day of the fast they disappeared entirely, or only an occasional one was found. They remained absent until June 27, the twenty-fourth day of the fast, when I began to notice a few very pale ones. They increased in number and in refractive power and in capacity to receive staining, until after a few days, they assumed their natural characters, but they were not abundant until after the close of the fast, when they at once assumed their old appearance.

The white corpuscles also attracted my attention during these observations. On the first day of the fast I saw nothing specially peculiar about them. Soon, however, I began to notice bodies resembling white corpuscles, only larger and more distinctly granular. They continued to increase in size and were not long in attaining a diameter exceeding 20% of an inch. They were composed of a large number of spherules of small size exceedingly difficult to measure. The bodies often had an active amoeboid movement. During the movement the granules seemed to flow out into the protruding portion, in a kind of stream. The granules in the corpuscles were usually still, but sometimes they had a swarming sort of motion. I have watched one single granule move for a considerable distance through the body before I lost sight of it. The large bodies usually had one or more places destitute of granules, which looked like nuclei; but they did not stain with carmine and appeared to me to be a vacancy of granules rather than nuclei. They were evidently depressions, and by careful focussing the floor appeared to be slightly uneven. Later on I saw the granules apparently leaving the bodies. At this time the free granules that have been mentioned reappeared in the blood. The time when these bodies were most abundant corresponded with the absence of the granules.

A day or two after the completion of the fast I was fortunate enough to discover some of the bodies near by free from granules, and could then see that they had a distinct stroma, apart from the granules.

A few days after the beginning of the fast I noticed some other singular bodies. They were irregular in shape with the general appearance of white blood corpuscles, were faintly granular, and often exceeded ‰ of an inch in diameter. Sometimes they contained dark particles embedded in their substance as though fragments of red blood corpuscles. They became less and less in number with the increase of the first described bodies but never entirely absent.

I noticed some bodies which were stellate in shape, with rays thick at the base, but passing off into long slender filaments which connected with the fibrine threads. They varied in size, but usually were smaller than a white blood corpuscle. They were exceedingly pale and difficult to see, but they had a distinct body, made up of something more than the crossing of fine threads, though appearances something like them were seen which were merely the crossing of threads. These bodies would take a distinct stain

from carmine.

There were also other bodies which it is difficult to classify. Several times I saw large colorless disks, sometimes more than Too of an inch across. In freshly drawn blood they had a raised rim either smooth or more often slightly fissured at intervals. After a time the fissures extended in every direction dividing the body into a great number of angular pieces. The pieces appeared to be attached to one another, though I am not quite positive about it. These bodies were seen occasionally throughout

the whole of the fast.

Small colorless bodies were occasionally seen after the first two or three weeks which resembled oil drops. I did not test these chemically, but I do not think they were oil. They had a refractive power which differed from that of oil; they could not be made to change their shape by pressure as oil could, and under no circumstances would they coalesce. There were some go to To000 of an inch in diameter though variable. They would not stain with carmine. Other bodies were seen which looked like these only somewhat fainter. They were often collected in masses. They were the palest and most transparent structures that I saw in the blood. I have tried again and again to trace them with the camera lucida, but usually failed, the slight impairment of definition of the prism being sufficient to render them invisible. Often I lost them in looking over a field, and was unable to find

them again. They were present after their first appearance during. the whole of the fast.

After about the fourth week of the fast I occasionally saw a pale globular body, like a sac with a piece cut out of the top. These bodies varied from about gʊʊ to oʊʊ of an inch in diameter. The suspicion has crossed my mind that they were the discolorized remains of a red blood corpuscle and that their progenitors were the pale corpuscles with the thickened rim, but I am by no means

sure.

Very often, even early in the fast, I saw bodies of the same color as the red corpuscles, embedded in the substance of a granular white corpuscle. In one instance I saw an unmistakable small red corpuscle with biconcave sides occupying this position.

SOME PHENOMENA IN THE CONJUGATION OF ACTINOPHRYS SOL. By J. D. Cox, of Cincinnati, Ohio.

In the latter part of last winter the opportunity occurred of making some consecutive observations upon this rhizopod in an infusion in which it appeared in considerable numbers, and some of the phenomena are so curious as to seem worthy of record.

These phenomena more particularly relate to the conjugation of the animalcule; but before describing them, I wish to note one or two points, which have reference only to the general form.

Professor Leidy, in his late work on the Rhizopods, gives his opinion that the rays of the Actinophrys are simply gelatinous pseudopodia of the same substance as the body, and without any solidified skeleton. The evidence for this he finds in the bending of the rays, under the force of a current, like grass in a rivulet. I have frequently observed this bending, but when it occurs under the influence of a current in the water, or of a passing animalcule of another kind, it has been greatest near the tips of the rays, and seemed consistent with a more or less perfect solidity in the parts

near the spherical body. But, what seemed conclusive, I have noted instances in which, by the rush of a Daphnia against the Actinophrys, the greater mass and impetus of the crustacean have broken the rays near their base, leaving them at right angles to their normal direction.

Again, when the Actinophrys passes into a condition, to which I shall refer a little further on, and which I have described as the opaline, the rays, in some instances, show a marked appearance of being dissolved and not simply absorbed or retracted. In some cases, when the animalcule suddenly collapsed, the rays were left as granulated remains of what they were, dissolving in the water separate from the mass of the body, much as if they were spicules of crystal-sugar or some substance of similar solubility.

By this, I do not mean that the ray was altogether of this character, for the gelatinous covering was also made manifest: first, by a rapid retraction, or current, on its surface, by which the more minute objects of its prey were drawn toward the body of the animalcule, and second by a similar outward motion by which the ejecta were carried away from the body.

When, in passing into the opaline condition, the animalcule becomes more transparent, a ring is seen near its centre, which does not correspond to the ordinary appearance of a nucleus, as seen in the infusoria, but has more the appearance of a small inner sphere, such as is seen in the endoskeleton of some of the polycystinæ, and the rays appear to reach through the sarcode of the outer body and to connect with this. I will not speak of this as proved, for the translucence of the animalcule never becomes transparence, and definite assertion would be rash. I will only say that so many phenomena point to the existence of an endoskeleton consisting of two concentric reticulated spheres with rays, partially solidified, but soluble, that I accept this as the probable anatomy of the creature.

The extent to which solidification has gone, and the degree in which it is limited, seem to me to be indicated by the movements of the rays near the contractile vesicle when this expands and collapses. As the vesicle grows large like a great blister on the side of the animalcule, the rays on either side slowly widen their angle, and on the collapse they quickly approach each other, retaining the stiff, rodlike character, and their true line of projection from the centre of the spherical mass.

It has sometimes been stated that the rays of Actinophrys cross